Child porn rampant on Web - Richmond News
By Eve Edmonds

There are 14 million child pornography websites operating on the Internet.

Every week, 20,000 new pictures of children being sexually exploited are posted.

Every day, 116,000 queries for child pornography are posted.

One in 12 children have gone to meet in person someone they met online.

These are some of the terrifying statistics participants heard at the sixth annual “Policing Cyberspace International Summit” held at the River Rock Casino Resort yesterday. The summit was organized by the Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB).

Most of the people at this conference are familiar with these gruesome stats.

They’ve convened to figure out how to bring down child predators in cyberspace.

The answer, in a word, is co-operate.

The problem is so massive that every level of government, every police force around the world and every company linked to Internet provision has to be involved, said keynote speaker Margaret Killerby, head of the Department of Crime, Directorate General of Legal Affairs, Council of Europe, France.

Killerby was addressing yesterday’s Policing Cyberspace International Summit in Richmond.

While some individuals and organizations work tirelessly to rid the menace, they are stymied by gaps that riddle the system, said Killerby.

This is a sentiment echoed by Earla -Kim McColl, superintendent of the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre (NCECC). She believes one of the gaps lies in the perception of Internet privacy.

“We need the public opinion to move toward understanding this as a public place. If I came to this hotel and said a guest brought a child here and sexually exploited him in one of the rooms, they would give me the name of that guest.”

But if she demanded the name of an Internet user who may have exploited a child online, the issue of privacy comes into play.

McColl says it’s difficult to balance personal privacy with public safety, but she added, “We need to see the Internet as a public place, like a park.”

It is only through accessing Internet connections and gaining personal data that her staff can intercept what, in many cases, can only be described as torture, she added.

“Some of these pictures — they’re not just kids in sexy poses, this is torture.”

She added that it takes a special kind of cop who can investigate these crimes, but they are all given health and wellness workshops to help them cope with the job.

The summit also addressed identity theft. Jane Billings, assistant federal deputy minister for cyber security, said Canada lacks an overall framework to deal with cyber security.

“As a country we don’t really know the nature of the threat. There is a lack of data.”

Internet security must be dealt with on the global level, but there is only so much Canada can contribute if we don’t even know the extent of the problem, she added.

In the next few weeks, Ottawa will strike a task force to draw up recommendations.

Internet providers are willing partners, she added, as they know they are only as secure as the next guy is vulnerable.

“Everyone is so interconnected if there is a virus at one end, it’s going to come down the line.”

published on 10/24/2006